ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE GODDESS PLANETS

Aside from a few thousand years of human history on the goddess planets, archaeology is almost nonexistent on Kepla, Jhone, and Yona. To have substantial archaeology (at least from a processualist perspective), there must be a long-standing material culture that clearly shows an evolution of humankind, which the planets sorely lack. When humans first colonized Kepla they were already a modern, functioning society, essentially "jumpstarting" Keplan anthropology. However, due to a dark age and massive loss of information and records, Keplan society isn't even aware of its Earth roots. Instead, religion has taken the place of anthropological basics and archaeology has become a tool for a theocratic push into academia.

At a typical Keplan archaeological site (and I use Kepla as a general example, though Jhone is pretty similar), there are at most two to four strata within a soil profile that contains artifacts, all usually higher up within the profile. It's standard to find larger features like hearths, building foundations, and the like within the middle strata, bullet casings and other war artifacts in the higher strata, and metal shrapnel/scrap metal within the older strata. Because the war took place so recently, the newer strata aren't really given much thought -- it's simply recorded, collected, and moved away from. Most Keplan archaeologists focus on the early Keplan dark ages, searching for ruins and old technology.

Another notable aspect of newer strata is skeletal remains from the first years after the death of the sun. The ground became frozen as a result of a sudden lack of solar heat, and because of this, people could not dig graves for the deceased. Instead, bodies were laid out in fields and left to be covered in snow. Nowadays, its common to find osteological remains within the top layers of crust. Jobs that require lots of digging -- agriculture, trades, geology -- are not for the faint of heart. It brings up a popular (often proposed jokingly) question that has become increasingly relevant: when does it stop being archaeology and start being grave robbery?

(The answer is clear, of course, though on Kepla its more difficult as people remember the war and have strong feelings because of it: it's archaeology when conducted under a survey with consent from the family/owner of the land. It's graverobbing when there is expressed intent to steal from a resting place and make money.)

As previously mentioned, archaeology on Kepla has become a mouthpiece for religion. Because of Keplan mythology stating that the goddesses appeared as rocket ships or space shuttles, the remains of these ships are seen as the remains of goddesses. Only one full husk has been found, twenty miles south of Miratt on Jhone; a large temple was built around it and the shuttle husk was interred out of respect for the goddess. Many like to capitalize on this cultural belief; there are hundreds of scammers selling scrap metal from the junkyard and passing it off as religious relics. This has led to minor cultural dissonance among the three planets, as Kepla and Yona have not found the original shuttles used for colonization and space travel. In many ways, Jhone is ahead of the game and a new center of the goddess planets.

The only exception to Kepla's archaeological field is Yona; because it has been built upon itself as one massive megalopolis, archaeology is strictly urban and only utilized for infrastructural development; for example, if a company wants to tear down a building and build a new one, archaeologists go in after the demolition and ground-truth. Oftentimes, though, they have to work against the spiderweb nightmare of electric and sewage pipes, which is a headache to anyone involved. As a result, archaeology is fading out of Yona's academic circle.

Archaeology on Kepla is an extremely small, yet powerful job field. It has political and theological gains to be made with every survey, but encroaches on the recent collective trauma endured from the solar death and war that ensued afterward.